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May 05, 2008
Coming Soon: Virtualized Everything
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With IT expenditures both capital (CAPEX) and operational (OPEX) spiraling out of control, businesses have swarmed to virtualization to help consolidate servers, cut energy costs and maximize utilization, among other benefits. But the server virtualization being offered by vendors like VMware is just the tip of the clichéd iceberg.
With their collective eyes set on drastically cutting CAPEX and OPEX while significantly increasing flexibility and scalability, a new breed of vendors is targeting the rest of the datacenter for virtualization. One of these companies is 3Leaf Systems, a Silicon Valley startup with a simple vision: to take a pool of x86 servers and decompose them into I/O, compute and memory, and make each available on demand. 3Leaf has a two-phase Virtual Compute Environment approach, says Senior Director of Marketing Rob Reiner, starting with I/O virtualization (currently available) and culminating with compute and memory virtualization spanning across physical machines (available beginning in 2009).
It Begins with I/O
The company’s virtual I/O software strips local storage, NICs and HBAs and replaces them with virtual versions. The servers are then connected via InfiniBand (although Ethernet functionality is on the way) to a commodity switch fabric, which is connected to a pair of 3Leaf’s V8000 virtual I/O servers. The V8000s connect directly to the SAN and LAN, and the entire setup requires approximately 80 percent fewer standby servers and 80 percent fewer SAN and LAN ports. According to Reiner, it also has saved proof-of-concept customers an average of 50 percent in CAPEX and OPEX.
Speaking specifically about OPEX, Reiner says the big savings come because server configurations are saved as profiles, so provisioning is as easy as pointing as clicking. And because the profiles are portable, users can switch from failover servers to spare servers as needed, which means users won’t need as many spare servers. In addition, the redundant switch and V8000 architectures add resiliency, which saves time and money in case of a hardware failure.
3Leaf’s approach differs from that of other I/O virtualization providers, says Reiner, because 3Leaf creates an open architecture leveraging commodity parts, including QLogic and Emulex HBAs to ease integration and certification. Plug-in cards and drivers also are commodity, which lets the company enable new features as they become available just by updating the drivers. By using commodity processors in the V8000 and supporting commercial switches, 3Leaf can follow the technology curves in these areas, as well, says Reiner. The real added value comes from the software, so being able to take advantage of hardware advances without heavy investment is a good thing. 3Leaf’s virtual HBAs and NICs also have adjustable QoA built in, so users have guaranteed bandwidth service levels.
Summing up I/O virtualization, George Crump, founder and president of analyst firm Storage Switzerland, said, “What it does today is allow you to solve that same sort of virtualization theme. It allows you to aggregate and better utilize existing network pipes for both storage and messaging ... so you can reduce overall port count in the enterprise and reduce, in some cases, HBA count and things of that nature.” Crump added that while I/O virtualization is appealing mainly to large enterprises, it will not near the appeal of 3Leaf’s virtual compute and memory solution once that becomes available.
Completing the Virtual Compute Environment
Crump says the advanced virtualization adopters with whom he has spoken are crying for something like 3Leaf’s Virtual Compute Environment (VCE), often telling him they “need to get out of the box. VMware was great, it gave me a lot of good ideas, but I’m essentially landlocked in the sheet metal [of the individual server].” They want greater flexibility, the ability to scale when necessary, and the ability to pull in idle processors at peak times, said Crump, and these capabilities are not too common outside of grid environments.
Announced in early April, 3Leaf will complete the VCE strategy and form truly dynamic datacenters with its “game-changing” virtual compute and memory server. The solution enables “expandable” servers that can share memory and compute resources across physical boundaries thanks to 3Leaf’s one-of-a-kind hardware-based scheme, says Reiner. “It’s as is this is one large expandable [and] contractable server,” he added.
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